Week 05- 02.05- What is an image today/ What is Art?

1. Images: Information vs art? What makes an image art?

Plato’s view of poetry- “there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry”

Fry describes Plato’s complaint (“a crooked stick”)

Two comprehensive world – views

For Plato is not about questions of the characteristics that define poetry; the differences between kinds of poetry; nor the senses in which poetry is and is not bound to representation, imitation, expression and fiction/ is not about beauty or any aesthetic consideration but about visions of the world. This will be our perspective- we will analyze poetry as a way to see the world, this way is common to all arts, this in juxtaposition with that of Philosophy

How does a philosopher sees the world?

Philo + sophos= knowledge, understanding, learn, practical reason (this is as much a depiction of a way of thinking as it is an example of it)

Poetry (art)= knowing, perceive, aprehend (we are training ourselves in this way of seeing)

Science – arts

theory – art

art history – art

“… the role of poetry (art) is to bring form to bear on the messiness of the world“ -(same segment from Fry’s lecture)

What is poetry? Three visions:

• A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe,
  helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him
  —Dylan Thomas
• Between What I see and What I say
• Tarkovsky interview

Medieval painting – Renaissance – impressionism – Futurism (Marinetti)-

Early flights

DADA

 World war

Early New york- https://archive.org/details/TripDown1905

https://archive.org/details/Living_Past_The_Part_2?start=236.5

HOW CAN WE DEPICT OUR EXPERIENCES OF THE WORLD AS WE PERCEIVE IT TODAY?

WHAT IS THE WORLD-VIEW THAT EMERGES FROM OUR WAYS OF DEPICTING IT?

Photoshop

1. Art and Freedom

in the previous segment Tarkovsky ends talking about “free will”

Kant- formalism FREEDOM

Tarkovski the role and place of the artist

relation between art and freedom

• Malevitch:

Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.

Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to have nothing further to do with the object, as such, and believes that it can exist, in and for itself, without “things” (that is, the “time-tested well-spring of life”).